Poll Position: Philadelphia

Y’all voted and the winner of the Tom Hanks themed poll is “Philadelphia”. If I learned one thing from this movie, it is this. I cannot spell Philadelphia without aids and copying the spelling from google’s autocorrect. I was rather happy to have a Hank themed poll, I’ve seen only a few of his movies and I loved ‘em all. Though I have only seen his comedy movies, so I see him as a serious character worries me. But how easy was it for me to accept his role as a serious character, find out after the jump.

Before I go into the characters, I would like to explain the story like if you were a 4 year old. It revolves around Andrew Beckett (Hanks) who is fired from his law firm after making a mistake on a huge case. Andrew later sues his firm for wrongful termination because he was sabotaged. He hires the help of Joe Miller (Denzel Washington), a homophobic lawyer, to battle the law firm. Though Andrew is sure that his termination was because of sabotage, Joe believes he was discriminated against because of he was infected with AIDS and is a homosexual. Most of the film takes place in the court house, where the two lawyer it up.

Simple enough, this movie was real powerful. There a few of messages and themes that is flowing in here. One being the obvious fact of unfairness and stigma against people with AIDS and homosexualality, this was huge to me. I’ve never seen firsthand discrimination against LGBT community, but I cannot believe it was strong as early as the 1990’s. So when I saw Joe freak out, stand back and wipe his hand on his shirt after learning that the man he shook hands with had AIDS. That blew my mind. I never thought that in the 1990’s that AIDS was so poorly understood by the general public. I’ve never understood homophobia, so when I saw all this homophobic reaction by many of the characters, it put me into a new world.

But to get into the performance of the movie, it was absolutely stellar. I loved the acting of both Denzel and Tom. Especially the growing relationship between both Joe and Andrew was sensational. I truly loved aand felt for the characters. The only thing that bothered me was the Jury scene. Where the jury goes behind the curtains and makes their decision, I felt they should have gone more into that. The scene lasted no more than a few minutes and was real anti-climactic. I would of liked to seen more drama between them. But to see the court hearings, I thought everyone played amazingly.

I think this movie has it all for a good serious movie. The story was good, acting was amazing and there were no over the top Hollywood dramatization. The movie sets a realistic mood with a serious undertone and takes you on a ride of emotions. I wouldn’t say people will cry in this movie, but there will be ones that will get shocked and open their eyes a bit more.

Best line of the movie: “It’s Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve” – random picketer

Best scene: When Andrew is in the library finding out some notes for his case, he is asked by the librarian, who gives him a book about laws for people with AIDS, if Andrew would be more comfortable in the private study room. Heavily implying that he is not wanted there because he is infested with AIDS, and the way Andrew acts to that situation is strong.